The cow got her chain around it (water for the garden)

Mama Atwood had only a third grade education.  Her mother took her out of school to help with the chores at her boarding house.  Hence the colorful spelling and grammar in her letters.

August 6, 1932

About the trees that Son set out. One of the pecan trees is just fine and the other one I can’t tell if it has grown any at all since spring. One peach tree looks like it will die in spite of me. Though I forgot to water it at one time when I watered the other ones. Also one in the garden where the cow got her chain around it & peeled all the bark off is still living. ...Twice a week I have to carry 15 buckets of water out of the house around on the east side to the three that are around there. All the others I can reach with the hose, thank goodness.

I have already let a part of my garden die and about the water bill ....last month was a dollar and sixty-five cents over the minimum. And the month before it was fifty cents over, and it will go over again this month because I don't mean to let any more of my garden die. But I don't mean to pay any over a dollar and 75 cents either…... As long as I know others who has no meter. ....

Mother's Day at the Atwoods 1928

May 14, 1928

I tried to get my seeds in the dirt all day Saturday, but I never did. I have so much to do I did not have time to fill the box with good new dirt....my dear little daughters both was cooking as hard as they could cook ...a big Mother;s Day dinner to bring down to my house…..

I hever in all my life saw so many good things to eat....we just had the table loaded down. We had fresh black eyed peas, snap beans, English peas, squash , beets, tomatoes, new potatoes, potato salad, lettuce, boiled ham, fruit salad, pies and cake. I though I never would quit eating.

It rained yesterday and last night and the ground is wet and I will have to wait for it to dry before I finish filling up the (flower) box and plant my seeds. Those black=eyed susans is not what I had reference to. But they look like they will be awfully pretty....perhaps the other package, of Lobelia, is really what I wanted. I had them in Bowie County, and I remember now ....they will bloom pretty quick after they start growing. I think the ones I had bloomed in three or four weeks but they did not last long.

Mama Atwood's gardening

Mama Atwood was a serious gardener; it helped to cope with poverty.  And she used organic pesticides like boiled tobacco juice.

April 15, 1928

Doesn’t it beat all...yesterday I told you how hot....and this morning it has sleeted and snowed all morning. The house tops and part of the ground is covered. it looks a little like it will stop though. And just think about it too. I have green cabbage out of my garden for dinner.

April 28, 1928

Yesterday I had peas and green cabbage and radishes out of my garden ....and Mrs. Spence the lady just behind me hollered at me and said, “You don't mean to tell me you have peas large enough to eat!” and I told her I most assuredly did and her and Mrs. Nabors came to the fence and Mrs. Nabors said, “My you are not lazy; you got up and worked and have a garden before any one else had.”

...my beans I replanted are coming up now and I also have squashes and canatalopes and cucumbers now ....I declare it is rather discouraging with the cold and the cut worms and grub worms and english sparrows and now the little green sucking lice has attacked my greens and if I can’t find something to kill or run them...in ten days time they will be sucked to death…..

I boiied some tobacco and took the juice and sprayed them just now. I don’t know if it will do any good or not. I am so mad because ...I intended to put out some tomato plants this afternoon but I am so sore I am afraid to do it. .....And my flowers are not all planted either....

Letter from Thurston to his mother 1934

Thurston had a job with Texas Power & Light Company selling washing machines.  His brother Watt was already working for them and managed to get Thurston hired.

From Hillsboro on a Tuesday he wrote"

Mother Dear….

Well, I broke the ice--and sold a machine--now I have good chance of selling a few more.

Here is five (dollars) …I bought me a hat.

Now I've written about 4 or 5 letters and haven't heard from you at all.  These Bohemians are hard people to trade with.  They act so darn bashful.

If I could surprise this outfit and sell a lot of washers---I believe I could get transferred into a district job.

I love you Lots…'N... Lots….Son

Oath for Confederate Soldiers upon surrender

This is a transcription of the oath signed by my ancestor. Champion Easter Smith in 1865

I, C. E. Smith, Citizen of the State of Texas, do solemnly swear in the presence of Almighty God, that I will henceforth faithfully support, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States and the Union of the States thereunder, and that I will, in like manner, abide by a faithfully support all Acts of Congress, passed during this existing rebellion with reference to slaves, as so long and so far as not repealed, modified, and held void by Congress or by decision of the Supreme Court and that I will in like manner, abide by and faithfully support all Proclamations of the President made during this existing rebellion, having reference to slaves so long and so far as not modified or declared void by a decision of the Supreme Court so help me God.

Sworn and Subscribed before me, this 15th day of June, 1865

signed     C. E. Smith

The above named has dark complexion, dark hair, grey eyes, aged 32 years, and is 5 feet 5 inches tall.

John Phipps
Capt. 34 Division, Provost Marsal.

A letter to Manning from Mama Atwood in California

August 8, 1927

Dear Dady,

We got back from Yosemite last night at 11:45 and found your letter.

…I have seen some wonderfully pretty things in the last two weeks.  And rode most to the top of several of the High Sierra mountains.  and got lots of thrills. And my ticket home calls for a ride on the Ocean from here to San Francisco. And on the S. P. R. R.over the High Sierra mountains past part of the country I was over last week.  Then down through Nevada and part of Kansas to Denver, Colorado to Oklahoma, and on to Fort Worth.

I will have to go miles and miles under a snow shed in the High Sierra Mountains.  I saw the train passing through sheds where I will go.  They were then higher than I was.  And I was looking down on the tree tops many, many feet below me….

Fishing in Aransas Pass, Tx. with Mother, Daddy and my kids

Those little blue crabs were really good to eat.  But one time while Mother was getting them ready to cook one got away and ran all over the camper.

Bill, Anne and Margaret enjoyed swimming in the Gulf.  We had a campsite on the beach at the Goose Island State Park.  It is near the sanctuary where the whooping cranes go for nesting. One of the biggest oak trees in the country is in that park.

Mama Atwood named her babies herself (she says)

March 20th 1958

Dear Mamie,

….If you think anyone named you but me you are mistaken.  No one named you but me.  No one name any of my babies but me..except poor little Sammie (passed away at age 12) She helped me to name Thurston  She was sick at the time & she  liked the name so that is what it is.

You was named Frances Mamie after my mother (Frances Stovall Smith) and Mamie after Mr. King's sister. (Mr. King was Mamie's father.) as she seemed to be his favorite sister.  He spoke of her more than Hattie.  He was proud & said I would name you Frances Mamie and call you Mamie.

Sawmill near Stryker in east Texas where Mr. King was employed.  Notice the steam train in the center of the picture.

You was borned at Stryker near Corigan in Trinity County.  then we moved to Diball near Lufkin.

Aunt Mamie runs for Congress 1949

Letter to Mama from Mamie November 12, 1949

….I thought that before I had some pictures made for campaign for U. S. Congress from this 13th district that I had better settle down to how I really should look all the time.

….I just hope that you will live to see the day that I am Congresswoman and earning about $15,000 a year.  The minute that I do--you are going off the old age pension and I will surely have something done to that house to make it more comfortable.

 Most everything else would stay as it is except that I would spend a greater part of the year in Washington D. C. every year.
 

Mamie was not elected to Congress from Los Angeles but we are proud of her for her ambition anyway.

Letter from Thurston to his big sister Mamie 1928

Thurston was born in 1914. He was 14 years old when he wrote this.

Dear Sis,

I am going to get promoted this year.  School will be out soon.  My grades were: reading 88 spelling 99 arithmetic 71 language 80 geography 85 history 88.  There are 25 or 26 in the class and I ranked 13.

Arithmetic is hard.  I made 95 in deportment.

This summer I am going on the Scout camp and nothing is going to keep me from it.  I hope to get me a job this summer painting with Uncle Jess.  He will give me 25 cents an hour for painting houses.

Say, I weigh 115 lbs and I can whip Watt all over the house.  I can Ha! Ha! you write him and ask him if I whipped him over at Jack's house.  I did.

It won't be long until I am a 1st class Scout. I am going to get a merit badge for cycling.  I have to ride a bicycle 50 miles ini 10 hours.  I can, too.

Lots of love  "Bill"

Thurston, Manning, Edward and Watt Atwood 1928

letter from Mamie Hansen to her mother Margaret Atwood (mama) 1963

Dear Mama,

Didn't you think of me last Sunday night?  I went to the Billy Graham services.  When they sang all the old revival songs I thought of you.

My childhood and girlhood, especially the time when Dad brought a load of livestock to Fort Worth and instead of going to the Majestic (vaudeville show) I took him out to the Fat Stock Show Coliseum to hear Billy Sunday.

During the sermon he leaned down and whispered, "Couldn't you have taken me to a better show than this?"

John Manning Arthur 1946

John was in the US Navy during World War II.  He was stationed in Bremerton, Washington after he had broken his leg in 1946.  This letter is to his aunt Mamie Frances Hansen who lived in Los Angeles.  Mamie was the "big sister" to John's mother, Ernestine, and all of the children of Mama and Manning Atwood.  She had written John and suggested he was a "Country Boy."

John's reply:

…this country boy has spent two years in the Navy in this country.  I have been everywhere except Florida and California. I've seen the best and the worst of people.  I have waded in the reflection pool ini front of the Lincoln Memorial.  I have spit 518 feet from the top of the Washington monument.  I have been dead drunk;  I have danced with the best and the worst.

I have spent a weekend in New England and talked Texas and Texas A&M to an honor graduate of the Harvard class of '34; I rode through New York City with three days to spend, but kept right on going.
I've blacked Navy fliers' eyes and they have blacked mine.  I paid $5 for a steak I could have gotten in Texas for sixty cents; I've swam in the Atlantic Ocean, Lake Michigan, Lake Erie, the Pacific Ocean, Puget Sound, and the goldfish pond in the Boston Commons.

John Manning is the toddler in the front row with his Daddy Hipp Arthur in 1928. 

I've danced in the Pump Room, the Empire Room, Marine Room in Chicago, and at the hotels in DC, Boston, Buffalo, and across the country to Seattle.  I've drunk beer in the dirtiest taverns in the same cities.  I've hitch-hiked from Buffalo to Boston; I've been under Niagara Falls, and I brought a pocketful of Ontario, Canada, back to the United States just for the hell of it.

I've done all sorts of things just for the hell of it.  And in spite of the fact that I may be a country boy, the people that I was with and I enjoyed every minute of it.  In short, I've been around and I'm damn proud of me, and I don't mind telling anybody.

1932: a letter from my great-grandfather to his middle daughter Alvina

Bobby Vanderpool, his mother Alvina with baby Kay, Papa  Barry
John Barry Vanderpool, Mable and her daugher, Ann Clare. 

Alvina and "Van" Vanderpool

Dear Alvina and all,

I received the two shirts today; they are fine.  Just in time and I thank you.  Also received the Valentine from John Barry (John Barry Vanderpool, his grandson, Alvina's son)  The picture is so sweet Ijust want to take him up and hug him and kiss him every time I look at it.  Thank him and you for sending it.

….received your letter a few days ago saying you had moved into an apartment $20.00 a month.  Does that include water, lights, & gas? If not I don't see how you can  pay it and live.  Wish I could help you just a little bit, but just can't.  Things are too tight here.

..It is still raining has been now Sunday, Monday and today (Tuesday) I took Mable (his youngest daughter, Alvina's sister)to Annona yesterday morning and she rode out of there on a horse in the rain.  Roads off the highway are impassable.

…am anxious to go to fixing my garden but too wet.  and no one to help me.

Jap (his brother Jasper, partner in the wholesale grocery firm earlier) and Maude gave us another rooster for Sunday dinner.  We asked them to help us eat it.  A large fine one, had enough left for our dinner Monday and today.  Eats are not costing us much only about $6 up to today this month  Milk and butter runs about $5 a month but Public Utilities eating us up.

Love to all,

Dad

Margaret Ellen Reese: school days

Margaret was a smart little girl, and pretty.  She always knew she wanted an affluent lifestyle, and even when she was in grade school she chose her friends carefully.  She told me when she was 11 years old that she wanted to be a doctor.  And nothing ever got in her way.  Not poverty, not boyfriends, not all the jobs she took as a teen-ager to make her spending and clothes money.  

She wanted to sell the most Girl Scout cookies, and make the best grades, and win the talent competitions.  She wanted  everybody to smile, and make the best of things.  And that's what she has always  done.

The Barry Family History

This document is not particularly striking but if you have any interest in the family my mother was from it can be interesting.  It is the history of the family of John Barry, who was my great grandfather and the father of my grandmother, Ruth Barry Ricketts.  It seems that Commodore John Barry was the "Father of the American Navy."

School Days and school pictures

Aren't they good-looking kids?  They were all smart, too, and made good grades.  Did I say?  Their teachers all loved them.  At least in elementary school.  Finally in 1970 we left Buffalo and moved back to Texas.

For a while we stayed at the Atwoods' in Mineral Wells, until I took a decorating job at Sears in Fort Worth and rented a house for us there.  It was at 4404 Wabash, in southwestern Fort Worth.

Our house on Harlem Road

When Hayne and I divorced we lived on Washington Highway which was a short walk from the University campus.  I started working first at Denton, Cottier and Daniels, a music department store in downtown Buffalo, and then for Sears where I learned my decorating career.

When our landlady sold the house on Washington Highway we moved to a very nice duplex on Harlem Road in the same neighborhood.  It was in the same block as Harlem Road Elementary School, where all 3 kids eventually went to school.  We had nice nieghbors, the Millers in the other side of our duplex, and the Boddys, who lived across the street.  Ray Boddy was a professor at the University and there were also boys named Paul Wasik and his cousin Mike Kwasniak, who were Polish and really nice kids.

Mother and Daddy came to visit and we made pictures on the steps of our Harlem Road house.  The white dog in the picture is Lily, who was the Boddy's dog.  I don't know whose cat is in the corner, maybe from next door.

Anne starts elementary school

Anne started school (kindergarten, actually) after 3 years of nursery school at the University of Buffalo nursery school.  So did Bill, and so did Margaret.  It was a really nice pre-school run by the education department at the University.  Then in 1965 Anne went to elementary school.  The first year she was picked to be in a picture in the neighborhood paper with a paper bunny that her class had made.

Wasn't she a beautiful little girl?  We were certainly proud of her.  She was smart, too, and all her teachers loved her.

Christmas at 208 WInspear, 1961

It was the Christmas before Margaret was born: December 1961.  Hayne's Aunt Laura Lu had sent matching red pajamas for Anne and Bill. 

 Hayne took these picture on Christmas Eve.  We have some movies made the next morning, Christmas Day, with their toys.  But I don't have them digitized for posting here just yet.

Front porch of our Winspear Avenue house in Buffalo

When Bill was born we lived in an upstairs apartment near the Buffalo Zoo.  I don't have any pictures of that place; we weren't there long…but we finally moved into faculty housing on the edge of the campus of the University of Buffalo.  

Our address was 208 Winspear Avenue.  We enjoyed that house a lot. It had a great sun porch and a fireplace in the living room.

The lady on the left in these pictures was Bill's godmother.  Her name was Charlotte Claflin.  I met her through la Leche League.

As you can see by this time I was in maternity clothes again; Margaret Ellen was on the way.  She was born January 30, 1962.

Loving the outdoors, Western New York, fall 1960

 In the fall of 1960 Hayne and I took the kids to the country.  We visited a couple of state parks, and even spent the night in one of them.  One of the advantages of breast feeding a child is that you can just pick up and go anywhere …and we did enjoy our weekends when the kids were little.

Baby Bill Reese

Bill was born on June 28, 1960. We named him William Hayne Waring Reese.

 Anne liked him, I think.  But every time I sat down to nurse him, Anne would run out the front door. (She had figured out how to move the little lock on the screen.)

We had a very busy summer.  Bill grew fast; he stood at 8 months and walked by the time he was 9 months old.  I really enjoyed both kids that year.

Anne's birthday tricycle

Anne Flavia was two years old on August 1, 1960.  Bill was just 2 months old.  We were living on Hertel Avenue in Buffalo in a garden-style apartment.  For her birthday Anne got a new red tricycle.

She is so well coordinated, by the end of the day she could not only ride but back up and turn around.

More from the scrapbook featuring Anne Flavia Reese during the 22 months before her brother Bill was born.  Photos from Iowa City, Iowa, Buffalo, and Lockport, New York.

The song I sang here was a favorite of all 3 kids. It is
The Old Woman and the Little Pig from a record by Jean Ritchie.

Hayne and Patsy Reese in Iowa City Easter 1958

Easter 1958 in Iowa City.  A friend made these snapshots. I had made that black maternity suit for myself.  I don't know what the monument was for; something about the campus I am sure.

The "baby bump" I had was Anne Flavia of course.

More About Anne Flavia's first months

These pictures were made after we moved to Buffalo.  We lived in an apartment near the campus for a few months and then we moved to the country.  We house-sat for a professor who was on Sabbatical for that semester. The farm was beautiful, with a big barn.  It was near Lockport, New York, on the Erie Canal.

We had neighbors across the street who had never been more than 25 miles from home.  They were farmers.  The place was beautiful but very cold.